


That Pesky Gravitational Pull

by Rehearsal_Dweller



Category: Gravity Falls, Phineas and Ferb
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-13
Updated: 2015-07-13
Packaged: 2018-04-09 04:29:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4333916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rehearsal_Dweller/pseuds/Rehearsal_Dweller
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After their parents send them away to spend the summer in Oregon (a measure inspired primarily by a desire for peace and quiet, both from them and their sister), Phineas and Ferb embark on an entirely different kind of adventure.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Pesky Gravitational Pull

**Author's Note:**

> We're only a few hours away from the new Gravity Falls episode, so as a distraction, I wrote this.  
> Basically the concept is that it's Phineas and Ferb taking Mabel and Dipper's place in the story, with no other changes at all. Everyone else is the same.  
> Well, almost the same. 
> 
> I probably won't be writing any more in this universe, but I may do another doodle or two. :)

For the sake of their mother’s sanity, Ferb Fletcher and his stepbrother Phineas Flynn were sent up to spend the summer with their Great Uncle Stan.

(Ferb wasn’t actually entirely certain how they were related to Stan Pines, but Mum called him Uncle Stan, so Phineas and Ferb were just sort of rolling with it.)

Phineas was excited, but that was Phineas’s way. Their friends back home had been disappointed to hear that they wouldn’t be up to their usual shenanigans, but maybe it would be good for them to have a quiet summer.

And anyway, Isabella’s Fireside Girls troop were going to two different camps _and_ National Jamboree this year, so they’d have been short a bunch of people for their projects.

Ferb was waiting to get a sense of what was in store for them before he judged things; he’d always been more cautious than his brother. They were spending some of every day working in “Grunkle” Stan’s tourist trap, the Mystery Shack, but otherwise were free to roam about as they wished. It wasn’t the _best_ summer they’d ever had, but it was all right.

Phineas was, thus far, preoccupied with exploring the town and forest, but if something didn’t change soon, he was going to start getting restless.

And then something changed.

One morning, when Stan had sent him out to put up signs in the forest, Ferb stumbled across something… odd. An old leather-bound journal, beat up and scratched, tucked away in a metal box buried at the base of a tree.

It was full of what _appeared_ to be scientific notes; only they were scientific notes on impossible things. Magic and monsters.

But whoever had written it seemed to think it serious, and something Ferb couldn’t quite explain compelled him to bring the book back to the Shack.

“What’cha got there, Bro?” Phineas asked, looking up from the sweater he was working on. (The knitting was a recent development, born of Phineas’s utter inability to sit still or do nothing.)

Ferb sat down next to him, careful not to move any of Phineas’s things. Wordlessly, he held out the book.

Phineas set his project aside and took the journal, flipping through its pages with wide eyes. “Woah. This is so cool! Did you get it in the gift shop?”

Ferb shook his head, nodding toward the window.

“That’s even cooler!” said Phineas. He lingered over the entry on gnomes. “Do you think it’s for real?”

Ferb shrugged. They’d seen – and done – stranger things than magic. Anything was possible.

\--

“Definitely real, definitely real!” Phineas kept repeating as they sped away from the giant collective of gnomes.

They’d kidnapped Wendy, a teenager employed by Grunkle Stan, and Ferb and his brother had given chase.

“If you have any solutions, bro, now would be a really good time!”

Ferb flipped through the book, trusting in his brother’s ability to drive them back to safety. He shook his head; apparently whoever had done this absurd study had never been able to ascertain the gnomes’ weakness.

_Well that’s inconvenient._

“Nothing?” Phineas clarified as he dodged a falling tree. “That’s _really_ inconvenient!”

Despite himself, Ferb chuckled.

In the end, Wendy herself was their saviour; she scattered the gnomes by hurling an axe into the centre of their giant gnome fusion.

It was terribly impressive, but Wendy waved it off like it was nothing.

“Seriously, guys, today was the most fun I’ve had in _ages_ ,” Wendy insisted, grinning. “But next time, could we maybe skip the kidnapping part?”

\--

Ferb had never really been one for excessive talking. He was quiet by nature, and Phineas was _decidedly_ a talker. Ferb had always been happy to leave the talking to Phineas, knowing that anything he really needed to communicate could go through his brother if he didn’t feel like saying it himself.

It wasn’t often that words failed Phineas.

They met Gideon on an ordinary day. They’d been scouting him as a competitor of Grunkle Stan’s, and he’d taken a shine to Ferb’s brother. Phineas, always one for making new friends, had been happy with the situation at first.

Until, that is, it became clear that Gideon’s feelings for Phineas leaned toward the romantic.

(Phineas didn’t talk about it much, but overt romantic attention made him intensely uncomfortable. He’d actually _never_ talked about it, by Ferb’s recollection, but it was one of those little understandings that passed between them without words.)

“- and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but I don’t know what to _do_!”

Ferb patted Phineas’s arm. “You can’t dance around the truth to preserve his feelings, Phineas. Especially if you’re hurting _yourself_ in the process.”

“I know,” said Phineas. He dropped his head onto Ferb’s shoulder. “But everyone was watching us and –“ he sighed. “Tomorrow, I’ll tell him.”

He squirmed around a bit, wedging himself firmly between Ferb and the arm of the chair. Not knowing what to say seemed almost to be causing him physical discomfort.

“If he can’t get it through his head tomorrow, I’ll talk to him,” Ferb said, extricating his arm from between them so that he could squeeze his brother’s shoulders. “I’ve been told that I’m quite persuasive when I want to be.”

No, it wasn’t often that words failed Phineas. But when they did, Ferb knew how to pick up the slack.

That said, even _he_ didn’t really know what to do when it turned out that Gideon not only _actually_ possessed supernatural powers, but was willing to use them to kill.

“That was –“ Phineas started as they stumbled back into the Shack.

Ferb nodded. “Intense.”

\--

“You really do seem to be a bit of a boy magnet, Phin,”

Phineas threw a pillow at Ferb.

It wasn’t untrue, though. Phineas was charming and outgoing, and had now attracted the affections of a total of _six_ boys (and two or three girls) since the start of the summer. Most recently a merman, which amused Ferb greatly.

“Shut _up_ , Ferb,” he said, rolling over to look at Ferb upside-down. “Can’t we, like, talk about something else? Like the book! Didn’t you say there was something you wanted to investigate today?”

Ferb pulled out the book and flipped to a page about a local conspiracy he’d been hoping to look into. He held it up for his brother to see.

“Cool!” Phineas said, launching himself off of his bed and across to Ferb’s. He elbowed his brother, wearing a huge, goofy grin. “Hey, Ferb. _Ferb_. I know what we’re gonna do today.”

\--

The really curious thing about summer in Gravity Falls wasn’t the magic or monsters or the secret base under the Mystery Shack that the boys didn’t actually know about (yet).

It was that not once yet this summer had either of them felt compelled to build some absurd, enormous _something-or-other_. Maybe that was part of the magic so deeply ingrained in this town as well.

Still, there was something surprisingly comforting in the little tinkering that they _did_ do, at the end of long days that nearly killed them.

(At the end of one particularly harrowing day, they built an entire animatronic pig. They did not explain the pig’s origins to Stan, just informed him that its name was Bartholomew.)

But on the whole, things were quiet. Mad and full of impossible things, but quiet.

_Of course_ , Ferb mused one evening as he read an entry about a squash with a human face and emotions, _there’s no knowing what we’ll do tomorrow._


End file.
